count's cabinet is full of guns, swords and hunting knives; it's
a perfect arsenal."

"Alas!" sighed M. Courtois, "we know of worse catastrophes. There
is not a week that the papers don't--"

He stopped, chagrined, for nobody was listening to him. Plantat
claimed the general attention, and continued:

"The confusion in the house seems to you surprising; well now, I'm
surprised that it is not worse than it is. I am, so to speak, an
old man; I haven't the energy of a young man of thirty-five; yet it
seems to me that if assassins should get into my house, when I was
there, and up, it would go hard with them. I don't know what I
would do; probably I should be killed; but surely I would give the
alarm. I would defend myself, and cry out, and open the windows,
and set the house afire."

"Let us add," insisted the doctor, "that it is not easy to surprise
a man who is awake. There is always an unexpected noise which puts
one on his guard. Perhaps it is a creaking door, or a cracking
stair. However cautious the murderer, he does not surprise his
victim."

"They may have used fire-arms;" struck in the worthy mayor, "that
has been done. You are quietly sitting in your chamber; it is
summer, and your windows are open; you are chatting with your wife,
and sipping a cup of tea; outside, the assassins are supplied with
a short ladder; one ascends to a level with the window, sights you
at his ease, presses the trigger, the bullet speeds--"